A Lakota Critique of the Dominant Society

"To come to nature, feel its power, let it help you, one needs time and patience for that. Time to think, to figure it all out. [But] YOU have so little time for contemplation; it's always rush, rush, rush with you. It lessons a person's life, all that grind, that hurrying and scurrying about."

"We Lakota spend a lot of time thinking about everyday things which in our mind are mixed up with the spiritual. We see in the world around us many symbols that teach us the meaning of life.”

"The Lakota have a name for white men. They call them wasicun - fat-takers. It is a good name, because you have taken the fat of the land. But it does not seem to have agreed with you. Right now you don't look so healthy - overweight, yes, but not healthy. Americans are bred like stuffed geese - to be consumers, not human beings. Fat-taking is a bad thing, even for the taker."

"You have raped and violated these lands, always saying, ‘Gimme, gimme, gimme,’ and never giving anything back. You have despoiled the earth, called things dead that are alive (rocks and minerals) but also ‘domesticated’ animals to the point they have no power."

“You have not only altered, declawed and malformed your winged and four-legged cousins; you have done it to yourselves. You have changed human beings into chairmen of the board, into office workers, into time-clock punchers . . ."
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John Lame Deer 
Lakota Medicine Man

Photos: Badlands National Park, SD, May 20-21, 2016
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